Ranchi, Feb. 18: The regional archive office near Kutchery Road is a place most frequented by research scholars not only from the state but from across the country.
The archive is a veritable storehouse of more than 40,000 documents of pre-Independence era, which includes land revenue, excise, political, local self-government, education, irrigation, PWD, finance, energy and municipal records prepared by British officers.
The pre-Independence files give vivid description of the pattern of governance during the Raj, like that of British official R.E. Russell of the Government of Bihar and Orissa who laid stress on providing education facilities for the Santhal in file number 11E, 1935.
Scholars from JNU, Nainital, Germany, Kenya, London School of Arts, Delhi University, Calcutta University and Visva-Bharati regularly take help of the records, which are of both Bihar and Jharkhand gazettes (1900-1966).
At least 10 scholars visit the archive for research work every month. However, many scholars rued the lack of modernisation and computerisation, because of which several old documents were suffering. Md Anwar, doing research on the development of railways in Jharkhand during the British period (1894-1947), was seen going through related documents.
“I am doing research work for two years and going through railway records pertaining to the period. But, the government should immediately take care of these documents, otherwise scholars like us will fail to complete their research,” he said.
K.K. Singh, one of the archivists, said before the bifurcation of the state, it was referred to as Bihar State Archive Directorate. “After the state’s formation, we had proposed to then chief minister Madhu Koda to set up a state archive directorate, which is in the process,” Singh added. He said the files were sent to the finance department for creation of posts so that edocuments could be preserved properly. But till date, there has been no response from the government, he said.
Singh added they had also sent a proposal to the government about two days back for digitisation of all records since the documents were really old. The archive has 700 books too. “After the formation of the state archive directorate, we will expand the library,” he added.
